2002 During the visit of Pope John Paul II to Mexico City, he canonizes
the first Amerindian Catholic saint: Juan Diego Cuahtlatoatzin, the Aztec
Indian neophyte who, aged 55, on Saturday 09 December 1531 was hurrying
down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City, when the Virgin Mary appeared
and sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood.
She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop's
answer. The bishop had not immediately
believed the messenger; having cross-questioned him and had him watched,
he finally told him to ask a sign of the lady who said she was the mother
of the true God. Juan Diego was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an
uncle, who seemed dying of fever. Indian remedies failed; so at daybreak
on Tuesday 12 December, the nephew was running to the Santiago convent for
a priest. He detoured to avoid the place of the apparition, but the Virgin
Mary crossed down to meet him and said: "What road is this that you are
taking, son?" Reassuring Juan about his uncle whom at that instant she cured,
appearing to him also and calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she told
Juan Diego to go again to the bishop.
Juan Diego asked for the sign. She told him to go up to the rocks and gather
roses. He knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went
and found them. Gathering many into his tilma (long cloak used by Mexican
Indians) he came back. The Virgin Mary, rearranging the roses, told him
to keep them untouched and unseen till he reached the bishop. Having got
to the presence of Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign. As he unfolded his
cloak the roses fell out, and the life size figure of the Virgin Mother,
just as he had described her, was seen on the tilma [image >].
A basilica was eventually built
on the spot of the apparitions, and the image on Juan Diego's cloak is venerated
in it. That is where the Pope celebrates the Mass of canonization.

2002
Petroleum Geo Services (PGO) is downgraded by Merrill Lynch from Long Term
Strong Buy to Long Term Neutral. On the New York Stock exchange its stock
drops from the previous close of $2.14 to an intraday low of $0.47 and a
close of $0.56. PGO had traded as high as $10.84 on 22 August 2001 and $38.41
on 03 November 1997. [< 5~year price chart]
2000 North and South Korea agree to reopen border liaison offices
and reconnect a railway linking their capitals.
1998 Gore wants web privacy laws Vice
President Al Gore, 50, urges Congress to protect online privacy through
laws banning the collection of personal data from children and imposing
strict penalties for Internet fraud. He calls for legislation forcing businesses
to protect medical, financial, and other personal data, and for harsh punishment
for criminals stealing Social Security numbers or other private information.
The White House says it will appoint a "privacy czar" to oversee the creation
of the privacy policy.
1997 For restricting encryption exports. A National
Security Agency official tells: a congressional panel that relaxing US export
restrictions on powerful encryption technology could seriously hamper efforts
to catch terrorists, spies, and drug traffickers.1996
After US President Clinton's announced that he would sign a pending welfare
overhaul bill, 98 Democrats join the House of Representative's Republican
majority to pass it.1995 The Walt Disney Company
agrees to buy Capital Cities-ABC Inc.for $19 billion. 1994
Comienza el despliegue estadounidense en Ruanda con fines humanitarios.

^1972 Hanoi claims that US bombers have struck dikes
Hanoi challenges the Nixon administration
on the dike controversy, claiming that since April there had been
173 raids against the dikes in North Vietnam with direct hits in 149
locations. On July 28, in response to claims by the Soviet Union that
the United States had conducted an intentional two-month bombing campaign
designed to destroy the dikes and dams of the Tonkin Delta in North
Vietnam, a CIA report was made public by the Nixon administration.
It stated that US bombing at 12 locations
had caused accidental minor damage to North Vietnam's dikes, but the
damage was unintentional and the dikes were not the intended targets
of the bombings. The 3000 km of dikes on the Tonkin plain, and more
than 3000 km of dikes along the sea, made civilized life possible
in the Red River Delta. Had the dikes been intentionally targeted,
their destruction would have destroyed centuries of patient work and
caused the drowning or starvation of hundreds of thousands of peasants.
Bombing the dikes had been advocated by some US strategists since
the beginning of US involvement in the war, but had been rejected
outright by US presidents in office during the war as an act of terrorism.

^1972 Eagleton dropped as VP candidate
by presidential candidate George McGovern, after word leaks that Thomas
Eagleton had once undergone electroshock treatment for depression.
McGovern initially said that nevertheless he stood ''1000 percent''
behind Eagleton. Born on 04 September
1929, Thomas Francis Eagleton, a Catholic and a Democrat, was only
27 when elected St. Louis Circuit Attorney. He served as Missouri's
Attorney General (1961-1965) and Lieutenant Governor (1965-1969),
won a US Senate seat in 1968, and served until 1987. He was instrumental
to the Senate's passage of the Clean Air and Water Acts, and sponsored
the Eagleton Amendment, which halted the bombing in Cambodia and effectively
ended US involvement in the Vietnam War. After three Senate terms,
Eagleton returned to St. Louis as an attorney, political commentator,
and Washington University professor of Public Affairs. He underwent
surgery for lung cancer on 08 September 1999.

1971 Apollo 15 astronauts take a drive on the moon in their
land rover.

^1968 Franklin's first
time in Peanuts
Franklin meets Charlie Brown at the beach. They'd never met before because
they go to different schools, but they have fun playing ball so Charlie
Brown invites Franklin to visit him at this house across town for another
play session. Later, Franklin turned up as center-fielder on Peppermint
Patty's baseball team and sits in front of her at school. Franklin is thoughtful
and can quote the Old Testament as effectively as Linus. In contrast with
the other characters, Franklin has the fewest anxieties and obsessions.
He and Charlie Brown spend quite a bit of time talking about their respective
grandfathers. When Franklin first appeared in the late 60s, his noticeably
darker skin set some readers in search of a political meaning. However,
the remarkable becomes unremarkable when readers learn that Schulz simply
introduced Franklin as another character, not a political statement.

^1964 Some US~South Vietnam agreement on conduct of
war In a news
conference, Secretary of State Dean Rusk [09 Feb 1909 – 20 Dec
1994] admits there are differences between the United States and South
Vietnam on the issue of extending the war into North Vietnam, but
agreement on the general conduct of the war. He stated that US warnings
to communist China and North Vietnam indicated total US commitment.
Ambassador Gen. Maxwell Taylor [26 Aug 1901 – 19 Apr 1987] had
met with South Vietnamese head of state Gen. Nguyen Khanh [1927~]
on 23 July to register US disapproval of the recent calls by Khanh
and Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky [08 Sep 1930~] to extend the war
into North Vietnam. The meeting was reportedly "heated." It was also
said that Khanh stood firmly against Taylor's reprimands, arguing
that the war had changed because of the presence of North Vietnamese
forces in South Vietnam. In a second meeting, Khanh offered to resign,
but Taylor, who became convinced that Khanh was at least partly right
about taking the war to the North Vietnamese, not only dissuaded him
but also ended up cabling Washington that the United States should
undertake covert planning with the South Vietnamese for bombing the
North. Despite ongoing disagreements about how best to conduct the
war, President Lyndon B. Johnson [27 Aug 1908 – 22 Jan 1973]
insisted that relations between the US and South Vietnam were good.
Rusk's comments were seen by many to be part of a campaign to reassure
to the South Vietnamese that the United States would continue to stand
by them in the struggle.

^1964 Ranger 7 photographs Moon
Ranger 7, an unmanned US lunar probe,
takes the first close-up images of the moon  4308 in total 
before it crastes on the lunar surface northwest of the Sea of the
Clouds. The United States had attempted a similar mission earlier
in the year  Ranger 6  but its cameras had failed as it
descended to the lunar surface. 2.4-meter-high Ranger 7, launched
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 28 July, successfully activates its
six RCA-TV cameras seventeen minutes or 2100 km before impact, and
begins beaming images back to NASA's receiving station in the Mojave
Desert, California. The photographs of the moon's surface are of excellent
quality, and the final image taken before impact has a resolution
of less than 30 cm.

^1945 French puppet of Nazis surrenders
In Austria, Pierre Laval, the puppet
leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, surrenders to US authorities,
who then extradite him to France to stand trial.
Born on 28 June 1883, Laval, originally a deputy and senator of pacifist
tendencies, shifted to the right in the 1930s while serving as the
French premier and minister of foreign affairs. A staunch anti-Communist,
Laval delayed the Franco-Soviet pact of 1935 and sought to align France
with Fascist Italy. Hostile to the declaration of war against Germany
in 1939, Laval encouraged the antiwar faction in the French government,
and with the German invasion in 1940 used his political influence
to force an armistice with Germany.
Laval offered the new Vichy state to Philippe Pétain [24 April
1856 – 23 Jul 1951], and as
Pétain's deputy encouraged the Vichy government in full collaboration
with the Nazi programs of oppression and genocide. By 1942, Laval
had won the trust of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler [20 Apr 1889 –
30 Apr 1945], and the elderly Pétain became merely a figurehead
in the Vichy regime. After the Allied liberation of France, Laval
was forced to flee to German protection to the east. With the defeat
of Germany in May of 1945, he escaped to Spain, but was expelled and
went into hiding in Austria, where he finally surrendered to US authorities.
Extradited to France, Laval was convicted of treason by the High Court
of Justice in a sensational trial. Condemned to death, he attempted
suicide by poison, but was nursed back to health in time for his execution
on 15 October 1945.

^1941 Heydrich to plan Final Solution, i.e. elimination
of Jews Herman
Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, ordered Reinhard
Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler's number-two man, "to submit
to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material
and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final
solution of the Jewish question." Goering repeats briefly the outline
for that "final solution" drawn up on 24 January 1939: "emigration
and evacuation in the best possible way."
This program of what would become mass, systematic extermination was
to encompass "all the territories of Europe under German occupation."
Heydrich already had some experience with organizing such a plan,
having reintroduced, in a more cruel version, the medieval concept
of the ghetto, in Warsaw after the German occupation of Poland. Jews
were crammed into cramped walled areas of major cities and held as
prisoners, as their property was confiscated and given to either local
Germans or non-Jewish Polish peasants.

^1941 Stalin: Hitler's immoral ways. Hitler's "greatest weakness
is found in the vast numbers of oppressed peoples who hate him and
the immoral ways of his government." This assessment is given by Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin (to whom the same applies), at a Kremlin meeting
with American adviser to the president Harry Hopkins.

^1917 The third Battle of Ypres begins
as the British attack the German lines.
General Douglas Haig disregarded the well-founded forecast that, from
the beginning of August, rain would be turning the Flanders countryside
into an almost impassable swamp. The Germans, meanwhile, were well
aware that an offensive was coming from the Ypres salient: the flatness
of the plain prevented any concealment of Haig's preparations, and
a fortnight's intensive bombardment (4'500'000 shells from 3000 guns)
served to underline the obvious  without, however, destroying
the German machine gunners' concrete pillboxes. Thus, when the Third
Battle of Ypres was begun, on 31 July, only the left wing's objectives
were achieved: on the crucial right wing the attack was a failure.
Four days later, the ground was already swampy.
When the attack was resumed on 16 August, very little more was won,
but Haig was still determined to persist in his offensive. Between
20 September and 04 October, thanks to an improvement in the weather,
the infantry was able to advance into positions cleared by bombardment,
but no farther. Haig launched another futile attack on 12 October,
followed by three more attacks, scarcely more successful, in the last
10 days of October. At last, on 06 November, when his troops advanced
a very short distance and occupied the ruins of Passchendaele (Passendale),
barely 8 km beyond the starting point of his offensive, Haig felt
that enough had been done. Having prophesied a decisive success without
"heavy losses," he had lost 325'000 men and inflicted no comparable
damage on the Germans.

1895 Se constituye el Bizkai Buru Batzar, base del Partido
Nacionalista Vasco (PNV).1891 Great Britain declares
territories in Southern Africa up to the Congo to be within its sphere of
influence.1882 Belle and Sam Starr are charged with
horse theft in the Indian territory.1874 Patrick
Francis Healy, S.J., is inaugurated
as president of Georgetown University.1863 Siege
of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues 1861
Ulysses S. Grant promoted to brigadier general 1849
Hungría pierde la independencia tras la derrota de sus tropas frente a las
austro-rusas en Segesvar (Transilvania).1834 Guerras
carlistas: El general Espartero gana a los carlistas la batalla de Artazu
(Navarra).1814 Pío VII restituye en el mismo estado
antiguo y en todo el orbe católico a la Compañía de Jesús.
1813 British invade Plattsburgh, NY 1809
1st practical US railroad track (wooden, for horse-drawn cars), Phila 1808 Tras la derrota francesa en la batalla de Bailén,
librada durante la Guerra de Independencia española, José I Bonaparte debe
abandonar la corte y refugiarse en Vitoria. 1790 The
US Patent Office opens with the first patent granted to Samuel Hopkins of
Vermont, developer of a new method of making potash. 1777
The Marquis de Lafayette, 19, a French nobleman, is made a major-general
in the American Continental Army.1760 Ferdinand,
Duke of Brunswick, foils last French threat at Warburg and drives the French
army back to Rhine River.

^1703 Daniel Defoe, 43,
is put in the pillory as punishment for seditious
libel, brought about by the publication of a politically satirical
pamphlet. Defoe was born in 1660.
His middle-class father had hoped Daniel would enter the ministry,
but Daniel decided to become a merchant instead. After he went bankrupt
in 1692, he turned to political pamphleteering to support himself.
Defoe's pamphlets were highly effective in moving readers. His pamphlet
The
Shortest Way with Dissenters was an attack on High Churchmen,
satirically written as if from the High Church point of view but extending
their arguments to the point of foolishness.
Both sides of the dispute, Dissenters and High Church alike, took
the pamphlet seriously, and both sides were outraged to learn it was
a hoax. Defoe was arrested for seditious libel in May 1703. While
awaiting his punishment, he wrote the spirited Hymn to the Pillory.
The public sympathized with Defoe and threw flowers, instead of the
customary rocks, at him while he stood in the pillory. He was sent
back to Newgate Prison, from which Robert Harley, the future Earl
of Oxford, eventually obtained his release.
Harley hired Defoe as a political writer and spy. To this end, Defoe
set up the Review, which he edited and wrote from 1704 to
1713. It wasn't until he was nearly 60 that he began writing fiction.
On 25 April 1719 was published The Life and Strange Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe's fictional account of a shipwrecked
sailor who spent 28 years on a desert island (inspired in part by
the real-life adventures of Alexander Selkirk as retold in Woodes
Rogers' Cruising Voyage Round the World). His other works
include Moll
Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). He died in London
on 24 April 1731.

1537 Carlos I de España y François I de Francia
firman en Niza de una tregua de diez años, que el rey galo rompió transcurridos
sólo cinco.1498 During his third voyage to the Western
Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus arrives at the island of Trinidad.0904 Arabs capture Thessalonica from the Byzantine Empire.

^0768 Philip begins and ends his reign as [anti]Pope
(on this date???  >)  Catholic
Encyclopedia says: Pope Paul
I was not dead when trouble began about the election of his successor.
Toto, duke of Nepi with a body of Tuscans burst into Rome, and, despite
the opposition of the primicerius Christopher, forcibly intruded
his brother Constantine II, a layman, into the chair of Peter (June,
767). In the spring of 768, however, Christopher and his son Sergius
contrived to escape from the city, and got Lombard king Desiderius
to sent troops to Rome, killing Toto, and blinding and deposing the
usurper Constantine II.They
were also able to overthrow the Philip, a monk of St. Vito's monastery,
whom some of their Lombard allies, backed by some Romans, had clandestinely
elected pope. Philip retired to his monastery.
By their efforts Stephen
III (IV), a Sicilian, the son of Olivus, was canonically elected
on 01 August 768 and consecrated on 07 August 768. Stephen
had been a Benedictine monk, and had been ordained priest by Pope
Zachary.
After his consecration the antipopes were treated with the greatest
cruelty which, it seems to be generally allowed, Stephen was unable
to hinder. To prevent the recurrence of such an election as that of
Constantine, the Lateran council forbade laymen to be elected popes
or to take part in their election for the future. Only cardinals were
to be chosen popes (April 769).

^2005 Pascal Kabungulu Kibembi,
prominent Congolese human rights activist, assassinated in the early
hours in his home in Bukavu. Three armed men in uniform break into
his house, drag him out of his bedroom, tell him “We were looking
for you and today is the day of your death.”, and shoot him
at 03:30 (02:30 UT) in front of his family. The murderers steal Kabungulu's
laptop computer, a TV, and a tape recorder. Kabungulu
was the Secretary-General of Héritiers
de la Justice, a leading human rights organization in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. He was also the Vice-President of the regional
umbrella Ligue des Droits de l'Homme dans la Région des Grands Lacs
(LDGL). Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty
International, and Front
Line jointly say the next day: “Pascal Kabungulu was a highly
regarded and courageous defender of human rights who gave hope to
ordinary people afflicted by war and misery. Killing a human rights
defender means spreading fear across whole communities in Congo.”
Héritiers de la Justice is a well-known
human rights group that has uncovered grave human rights abuses, including
war crimes in eastern DRC. Created in 1991, the organization has been
an independent critic of the governments of presidents Mobutu
Sese Seko [14 Oct 1930 – 07 Sep 1997], Laurent-Désiré
Kabila [27 Nov 1939 – 18 Jan 2001], and the current transitional
authorities under Joseph
Kabila [1971~]. The organization has also documented grave abuses
by armed groups operating in eastern Congo. Pascal Kabungulu joined
Héritiers de la Justice in the mid-1990s and became its Secretary-General
in 1999. He had been planning to leave Héritiers de la Justice to
take up a position at the LDGL secretariat in Kigali, Rwanda.

^2002
Two Israelis and 5 US nationals, by a bomb exploding
at lunchtime in the cafeteria in the International Frank Sinatra Student
Center building of Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem.
The ceiling collapses. 86 persons are injured, of which two Israeli
women would die later of their injuries: Daphna Spruch, 61, from Jerusalem,
on 10 August; and Revital Barashi, 30, on 13 August. Hamas announces
that it has placed the bomb (not a suicide bombing).
According to Reuters the al-Aqsa body count now stands at at
least 1472 Palestinians and 573 Israelis [others count more].

The dead Israelis are:Levina
Shapira, 53 [photo >], was from a long-established
Jerusalem family. She was head of the Student Authority at Hebrew
University, where she had worked for 33 years. Diego
David Ladovsky, 29 [<photo], had
just entered the Israeli diplomatic service and was supposed to go
in 10 days to Lima, Peru, as second secretary in the embassy. Ladovsky
had just completed a master's degree in public administration; he
was at the university this day to turn in his final project. Ladovsky
was born in Argentina and moved to Israel in 1992. He completed his
bachelor's degree and then his army service, and then worked for a
while in the Communications Ministry. In 2000, he joined the Foreign
Ministry's diplomatic training program.

The dead US nationals are:Janis
Ruth Coulter[< photo], born on 05 August
1966, was an assistant director of graduate studies for the Hebrew
University's Rothberg International School in New York. She was escorting
a group of 20 US students to Israel. Coulter grew up in Boston's West
Roxbury neighborhood and was raised as an Episcopalian, but converted
to Judaism in 1996. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst in 1991, she went on to Denver's Institute for Islamic-Judaic
Studies, where she was about to finish her master's thesis on the
Book of Ruth. In 1999 she moved to New York to take a job with Hebrew
University's admissions department. She also had spent an entire year
at Hebrew University, pursuing her master's degree and learning Hebrew.
Her body was identified by her jewelry and her dental records David Gritz, 24, dual
US-French citizen, was the son of a Croatian mother and a US father.
David Gritz grew up in Paris, where his father was a teacher, but
spent his summers at his parents' house in the small town of Peru
in the Berkshires, about 15 km east of Pittsfield. Gritz had studied
at McGill University in Montreal for one year before he attended Sorbonne
University in Paris, where he earned a degree in philosophy. He was
to begin a graduate course in Jewish thought at Hebrew University
the next day. Benjamin
Blutstein, 25, of Susquehanna Township, Pennsylvania, was
on a two-year graduate study program to be a teacher of Jewish studies.
He was expected to return to Pennsylvania the next day.Marla
Bennett, 24, of San Diego, had been doing joint graduate
work at Pardes Institute and Hebrew University in Judaic Studies.
She was due to return home two days later to spend about a month visiting
family before returning to Israel. She was in the second year of a
three-year master's program in Judaic Studies, and had been at the
university to take a final exam in her sole Hebrew University class
of the semester, Hebrew Language. She graduated from the University
of California at Berkeley with a bachelor's in political science and
had spent her junior year of undergraduate study in Israel.Dina Carter, 37, with
dual nationality US-Israel, born in North Carolina, studied anthropology
at Duke University, and social work at Chappel High University. Moved
to Israel in 1990 and worked as a librarian and archivist in the National
Library on Mount Scopus.

^2001 Ashraf Khader, 5, Bilal Khader, 8, Jamal Mansour,
42, Jamal Salim, 41, Fahim Dawabshe, 32, and four other Palestinians,
killed by Israel. Israeli
helicopters fire missiles into offices of Hamas in Nablus, West Bank.
Brothers Ashraf and Bilal Khader, in town for a visit, are killed
by shrapnel, as they stand on the street with their mother, Nadia
Khader, who is unhurt. The main target is Mansour, a senior Hamas
leader in the West Bank who has been arrested repeatedly by the Israelis
and the Palestinian Authority. Israel said Mansour was part of the
Hamas leadership responsible for attacks that included the 1 June
suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv disco that killed 21 Israelis. Salim
and Dawabshe were regional Hamas leaders. Three more Palestinians
inside the Hamas offices are killed in this attack.
Two Palestinians are also killed this same day, in the Gaza Strip
 one shot by Israeli troops, the other appeared to fall victim
to an internal Palestinian feud. In
Beit Sahour, West Bank, a 57-year-old man believed to be a collaborator
with Israel is shot and killed by Palestinians. A
Palestinian security court in Nablus sentences three Palestinians
to death for helping Israel kill Fatah activist Thabet Thabet in December
2000. Another man is sentenced to 15 years in prison and a fifth is
released. Arafat has to approve the death sentences before they can
be carried out. The previous day,
six Palestinian activists were killed when a roadside car parts store
exploded outside Nablus, not far from Tuesday's attack. All six belonged
to the Fatah movement headed by Arafat. The
al-Aqsa intifada (started 28 September 2000) body count thus stands
at 548 Palestinians and 133 Israelis.

^
1975 Jimmy Hoffa, presumably murdered.
Notorious US labor leader James Riddle Hoffa, born on 14 February
1913 in Brazil (Indiana), a former Teamsters president who had served
four years in prison, is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He
was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Red Fox restaurant
the previous afternoon and is suspected to have been murdered.
In 1932, as a young warehouseman, he
organized a union that within two years entered into the Teamsters,
a national union made up primarily of truckers. In 1957, the year
he became Teamsters president, a Senate Judiciary Committee uncovered
widespread corruption in the union, which led to its expulsion from
the AFL-CIO, the nation's dominant labor organization.
Hoffa remained a popular Teamsters president, even though, in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, he became the main focus of government
investigations into corruption. In 1962, Hoffa faced misdemeanor charges
in Tennessee. He managed to get a mistrial but was convicted two years
later for obstruction of justice by tampering with the jury, receiving
an eight-year sentence. In Chicago, Hoffa was tried for fraud in handling
Teamster pension funds and convicted. After losing numerous appeals,
he began serving his thirteen-year prison sentence in 1967, but in
1971 was pardoned by President Richard Nixon.
However, Hoffa left prison with the parole provision that he not engage
in union activity until 1980. After his release, he was active in
promoting prison reform, and supported Nixon in his 1972 reelection
bid. Hoffa disappeared in 1975, and is widely assumed to have been
murdered by enemies in organized crime. However, rumors of his whereabouts
persisted for several years, the strangest of which had him buried
under Section 217 of Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
In the mid-1980s one man even claimed having murdered Hoffa and dumped
his body in the Ausable River. Authorities have never been able to
confirm what really happened to Hoffa.
Hoffa was officially declared "presumed dead" on 08 December 1982.
His son James Phillip Hoffa, born in 1942, eventually succeeded him
on 01 May 1999 at the head of the Teamsters, after quite a struggle.

1966 Six persons killed at University of Texas by Charles
Whitman, who also wounds 46 others 1953 Robert Taft,
63, (Sen-R-Oh) (Mr Republican), in NY

^1953 Robert A. Taft, US Senate majority leader
Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio) dies of cancer
at the age of 63. Branded by critics as an "isolationist," Taft was
a consistent critic of the US's Cold War policies. Taft, known as
"Mr. Republican" because of his ferocious partisanship, was a true
conservative in every sense of the word. First elected to the Senate
in 1938, Taft lashed out at Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs
as being too expensive and wasteful of taxpayers' dollars. During
World War II, he warned against the tremendous growth of presidential
power, which he claimed threatened the people's liberties and freedom.
This same kind of criticism also brought Taft into conflict with the
American government's Cold War policies after World War II. He attacked
President Harry S. Truman's policy of containment of the Soviet Union,
arguing that the United States was provoking Russia into a war. He
vigorously opposed the Marshall Plan, designed to give billions of
dollars in aid to Western Europe, as far too costly. He also voted
against US participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) because he believed it impinged on the nation's freedom of
action. Overall, Taft feared that Truman and the US government were
using the Cold War to take on powers they were never intended to have.
For this reason, he also opposed Truman's call for a peacetime draft
in 1948. Taft's harsh criticisms sometimes brought him into conflict
even with members of his own party. After winning the presidential
election in 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly attacked
what he called Taft's "isolationism" and "fortress America" mentality.
In the years following his death, however, Taft's views gained new
credibility. The immense costs of the Cold War and the brutal and
inconclusive Vietnam War seemed to bear out many of Taft's criticisms
of the US's Cold War policies. During the 1960s, a number of scholars
noted the similarities between Taft's opposition to the draft and
US military intervention overseas and the objections raised by the
anti-Vietnam War movement.

^1937 Charles Martine, Apache scout,
on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico He
had played an important role in the 14 September 1886 surrender of
Geronimo
[16 Jun – 17 Feb 1909]. Born in 1858 among the Chiricahua Apache of
northern Mexico, Martine was captured as a young boy and sold to a
Mexican family as a servant. His knowledge of both Spanish and Apache
and his familiarity with the southern desert lands eventually made
him a valuable interpreter and scout. In 1886, US General Nelson
Miles [08 Aug 1839 – 15 May 1925] recruited Martine and another
Apache, Kayitah [–1934], to help track down the renegade Apache
chief Geronimo. The wily Geronimo had long stymied the US Army's best
efforts to find and arrest him. Now Miles decided to try negotiating.
He wanted Martine and Kayitah to find the chief and persuade him to
come in and talk about peace. If they succeeded, Miles reportedly
promised they would be well rewarded by the US government.
Accompanied by a small party of soldiers,
Martine and Kayitah eventually located Geronimo's camp in northern
Mexico. Bearing a white flag, the two scouts cautiously approached
the hostile camp. Geronimo initially wanted to shoot the two scouts,
but his braves convinced him to let them come forward. Still in considerable
danger, the two scouts entered the camp. They managed to convince
Geronimo to talk to the army officers. Eventually, Geronimo agreed
to a meeting with General Miles during which Geronimo gave his unconditional
surrender. Despite their brave and effective service in obtaining
the surrender of one of the last hostile Indians in the nation, Martine
and Kayitah never received the awards promised them by General Miles.
Instead, they were exiled to the east with Geronimo and the other
hostile Apache. Miles insisted that all the Chiricahua Apache be exiled-even
the scouts who had worked for the US Army. In 1913, they both opted
to move to the Apache reservation at Mescalero, New Mexico, where
Martine died. He was about 80 years old. His longtime friend and ally,
Kayitah, had died three years earlier.

1929
Ángel Lizcano y Monedero, pintor español. — links
to images.1914 Jean Jaurès, asesinado en París,
sociólogo, filósofo, y político socialista francés.1906 Ferdinand
von Wright, Swedish French artist, dies on his 84th birthday.1896 Ludwig
Christian Wiener, German mathematician born on 07 December
1826. His chief work is the 2-volume Lehrbuch der darstellenden Geometrie.
1888 Frank Montague Holl, British Social
Realist painter born on 04 July 1845.  MORE
ON HOLL AT ART 4 JULY 04 with links to images.1886 Franz Liszt,
compositor y pianista húngaro. 1875 Andrew
Johnson, in Tennessee. 17th US President; he succeeded Abraham
Lincoln and was the only president before Clinton to face impeachment proceedings.
Johnson (portrait, after 1866, by Washington Bogart Cooper [1802-1889] >)
was born on 29 December 1808. When he was 3 his father died. Andrew Johnson
never attended school, he was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of 10.
He taught himself to read and, after he married, his wife taught him the
basics of an education. He organized a Working Man's party in 1828. In 1830
he was elected mayor of Greenville, Tennessee, went on to the state legislature,
then to the state senate. In 1843 he was elected to the US Congress. In
1853 he was elected governor. In 1857 the legislature elected him to the
US Senate, where, a slave owner himself, he was pro-slavery. But he opposed
secession and on 04 March 1862 Lincoln named Johnsor Military Governor of
Tennessee (which had seceded and only by summer 1863 was completely under
Union control), which office he assumed on 12 March. Johnson was nominated
for Vice President by the Republican convention on 07 June 1864 and was
inaugurated with Lincoln (whose 2nd term it was) on 04 March 1865. Lincoln's
14 April 1865 assassination made Johnson President. On 29 May Johnson granted
a general amnesty to most Confederates. His lenient attitude towards the
rebels brought him into open conflict with Congress, which he accused of
rebellion and which overrode his vetoes. After Johnson, on 12
August 1867 removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton without the consent
of the Senate (required by the Tenure-of-office bill bassed in March 1867),
the House of Representatives impeached him, 126 to 17, on 03 March 1868.
The Senate trial ended with votes on 16 May and 26 May 1867, 35 guilty to
19 not guilty, which, falling just short of a 2/3 majority, failed to convict
Johnson. His term as president ended in March 1869. At the beginning of
1875, the Tennessee legislature narrowly elected him to the US Senate.1863 William Henry Knight, British artist born on 26 September
1823.1826 El maestro Cayetano Ripoll, ejecutado por hereje,
en Valencia, en el último auto de fe de los realizados en España.1820 Carl Friedrich Zimmerman, German artist born on 31
March 1796.1819 Jurriaan Andriessen, Dutch artist
born on 12 June 1742. — more 1811 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, 58, Catholic priest "father
of Mexican independence", executed by Spanish firing squad.1776
Francis Salvador, a plantation owner from South Carolina, first
Jew to die for American independence, killed in a skirmish with the British.1760 Adrien Manglard, French artist born on 12 March 1695.1726 Nicolaus(II)
Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician born on 06 February 1695, one
of the three sons of Johann
Bernoulli [27 Jul 1667 – 01 Jan 1748].1693 Willem
Kalf, Dutch painter born in the period of 1619 to 1622, specialized
in Still
Life. MORE
ON KALF AT ART 4 JULY with
links to images.

^1556 Saint
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of Society of Jesus, dies
in Rome. The Society of Jesus, as
the Jesuit order is formally known, played an important role in the Counter-Reformation
and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism.
Ignatius, the son of a noble and wealthy Spanish family called the Loyolas,
was born in his family's ancestral castle in 1491. Little interested in
church matters, he trained as a knight and in 1517 went in the service of
a relative, Antonio Manrique de Lara, the duke of Nájera and viceroy of
Navarre. In May 1521, during the siege of Pamplona by the French, his legs
were shattered by a cannonball. Seriously wounded, he was transported to
his family's castle, where he was forced to lie in convalescence for many
weeks. During this time, he was given the Bible and a book on the saints
to read. He came to see the service of God as a kind of holy chivalry and
resolved to live an austere life in imitation of the saints.
In February 1522 he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, where a wooden statue
of the Virgin Mary and Child, supposedly carved by Saint Luke, resides.
Ignatius hung his sword and dagger near the statue as symbols of his conversion
to a holy life. For the next year, he lived as a beggar and prayed for seven
hours a day, often in a cave near Manresa in northeastern Spain. During
this time, he composed an early draft of The Spiritual Exercises, his manual
for spiritual meditation and conversion. In 1523, he made a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. After his return to Spain
in 1524, Ignatius resolved to gain an extensive education to prepare himself
for his spiritual mission. He studied in Barcelona and at the University
of Alcalá, where he began to acquire followers. Suspected of heresy, he
was tried in Alcalá, and later in Salamanca but both times was acquitted.
He was forbidden to teach until he reached the priesthood, and he went to
the University of Paris to continue his studies.
In August 1534, the Jesuit movement was born when Ignatius led six of his
followers to Montmartre near Paris, where the group took vows of poverty
and chastity and made plans to work for the conversion of Muslims. If travel
to the Holy Land was not possible, they vowed to offer themselves to the
pope for apostolic work. In 1537, Ignatius and most of his companions were
ordained. Unable to travel to Jerusalem because of the Turkish wars, they
went to Rome instead to meet with the pope and request permission to form
a new religious order. In September 1540, Pope Paul III approved Ignatius'
outline of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known.
Under Ignatius' charismatic leadership,
the Society of Jesus grew quickly. Jesuit missionaries played a leading
role in the Counter-Reformation and won back many of the European faithful
who had been lost to Protestantism. In Ignatius' lifetime, Jesuits were
also dispatched to India, Brazil, the Congo region, and Ethiopia. Education
was of utmost importance to the Jesuits, and in Rome Ignatius founded the
Roman College (later called the Gregorian University) and the Germanicum,
a school for German priests. The Jesuits also ran several charitable organizations,
such as one for former prostitutes and one for converted Jews. When Ignatius
de Loyola died on 31 July 1556, there were more than 1000 Jesuit priests.
During the next century, the Jesuits set
up ministries around the globe. The "Black-Robes," as they were known in
Native America, often preceded European countries in their infiltration
of foreign lands and societies. The life of a Jesuit was one of immense
risk, and thousands of priests were persecuted or killed by foreign authorities
hostile to their mission of conversion. However, in some nations, such as
India and China, the Jesuits were revered as men of wisdom and science.
With the rise of nationalism in the 18th
century, most European countries suppressed the Jesuits, and in 1773 Pope
Clement XIV dissolved the order under pressure from the Bourbon monarchs.
However, in 1814, Pope Pius VII gave in to popular demand and reestablished
the Jesuits as an order, and they continue their missionary work to this
day. Ignatius de Loyola was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1622. His feast
day is 31 July.

1970 The complete New American Standard Version
of the Bible (NASB) is first published. (The completed NASB New
Testament had been released earlier, in 1963.) 1953 US Department
of Health, Education & Welfare created 1945 John
O'Connor, English mathematician 1943 William
Bennett US Secretary of Education (1985-1988) / drug czar.1923 Juan Vernet Ginés, profesor e historiador español. 1921 Whitney M. Young Jr., US civil rights leader, head
of the National Urban League. He died on 11 March 1971.1919
Primo Levi, Italian Jewish chemist and writer influenced by his
captivity at Auschwitz (Survival in Aushchwitz). He died on 11 April 1987.1919 Rafael Morales, poeta español.

^1912 Milton Friedman, US conservative
economist who died on 16 November 2006.Friedman
picked up a string of degrees from schools including Rutgers University
and Columbia University, before taking up a post in the University
of Chicago's mighty economics department. An ardent proponent of laissez-faire
economics, Friedman readily articulated his faith in a fiscal system
that depended less on policy than "natural" forces. Along the way,
Friedman became the leading light of the "monetarist" school, which,
in the laissez-faire tradition, dismissed the government's role as
the supposed engine of business. Rather, Friedman and his fellow monetarists
believed in stable interest rates and robust money supplies. Friedman
used a number of his publications, including Capitalism
and Freedom (written with his wife, Rose), to further stump
against "big Government." While
Friedman's beliefs aroused considerable criticism from liberals, leftists
and even a few government-centric voices on the right, he was honored
with the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. The lofty award hardly
slowed Friedman, who continued his battle against the perceived inanity
of the Federal government's fiscal policy. —(061117)

1904 The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains
with Russia's Pacific coast, is completed.1901 Jean
Philippe Arthur Dubuffet France, pop painter (Landscape with
2 Personages). He died in 1985. Reproductions of paintings by DUBUFFET
ONLINE: LINKS
 Personnage
au chapeau(1962)  Sourire
(1961)  Ustensiles Demeures Escaliers La Vache au Nez Subtile
 Dhotel Nuance d'Abricot
 Supervielle1900 Elmo Roper, US developer of political forecasting
by polls. He died on 30 April 1971.1886 Constant Permeke,
Belgian artist who died in 1952.1883 Paul Kleinschmidt,
German artist who died in 1949. 1883 Erich Heckel,
German Expressionist painter printmaker and sculptor who died on 27 January
1970; one of the founders of Die Brücke group of Expressionist artists.
 links to images.1881 Léon Spilliaert, Flemish Symbolist painter
who died in 1946.  MORE
ON SPILLIAERT AT ART 4 JULY
with links to images.1879 Léopold Survage,
French artist who died on 01 November 1968.  more
with links to two images. 1875 “Jacques Villon”
= Gaston Duchamp, French Cubist
painter who died on 09 June 1963.  MORE
ON VILLON AT ART 4 JULY
with links to images.1867 S.S. Kresge, would grow
up to be a US businessman owning a chain of 1000 five-and-ten-cents stores.
He died on 18 August 1966.1863 George
Abram Miller, US mathematician who died on 10 February 1951.1863 Ernest Bieler, Swiss artist who died in 1948.1858 Richard Dixon Oldham, English geologist who discovered
evidence of the Earth's Core. He died on 15 July 1936.1854
José Canalejas, político liberal español.1848 Jean
Baptiste Joseph Olive, French artist who died in 1936. 1844
Léon Augustin L'hermitte, French painter who died on 27 July 1925.
 MORE
ON L'HERMITTE AT ART 4 JULY 27
with links to images. 1837
William Clarke Quantraill, Confederate raider known as one of the
most vicious butchers of the American Civil war.1835 Henri
Brisson, French politician who was twice premier of France. He
died on 11 April 1912.1830 Ignacio Suárez Llanos,
pintor español. 1826 Daniel
Friedrich Ernst Meissel, German mathematician who died on 11
March 1895.1823 Germain Fabius Brest, French Austrian
artist who died in November 1900.1822 Abram Stevens Hewitt,
US industrialist and philanthropist who became mayor of N. Y. C. He died
on 18 January 1903. 1821 William Hammer, Danish
artist who died on 09 May 1889.  [Not related to Armand Hammer (21
May 1898  1990), Arm
& Hammer, or Hammer & Sickle]1819 Edouard Henri
Girardet, French artist who died on 05 March 1880. — more
with link to an image.

^1816 George Henry Thomas,
The Rock of Chickamauga, in Virginia He
would earn the nickname by his bravery as a Union general at the Civil
War battle of Chickamauga (19-20 September 1863)
Union General George H. Thomas, who deserves a share of the credit
for the Union success in the west, is born in Southhampton County,
Virginia. Thomas exemplified the difficulties that individuals who
chose to break with their native states over the issue of secession
faced. After graduating from West Point, Thomas served in the Seminole
and Mexican-American Wars. During the 1850s, he served in Texas with
the 2nd Cavalry alongside many prominent future Confederates such
as Robert E. Lee [19 Jan 1807 – 12 Oct 1870], J.E.B. Stuart
[06 Feb 1833 – 12 May 1864], Albert S. Johnston [02 Feb 1803
– 06 Apr 1862], and John Bell Hood [01 Jun 1831 – 30 Aug
1879]. When Virginia seceded
from the Union, Thomas chose to remain loyal to his country. For this
decision, Thomas paid dearly. His family disowned him, and he found
advancement in the Union army difficult. He often served under Northern-born
men of lesser ability. Thomas was given command of Union forces in
eastern Kentucky, and he distinguished himself with a key victory
over the Confederates at Logan's Cross Roads (or Mill Springs, or
Fishing Creek) (19 Jan 1862). After the Battle of Shiloh (06 and 07
Apr 1862), Thomas was given command of the Army of the Tennessee when
Ulysses S. Grant became the second-in-command in the west to Henry
Halleck. This command was given back to Grant during reorganization
in 1862. Thomas commanded a corps
at Stones River and became a Northern hero for his actions at Chickamauga
(19 and 20 September 1863). When a gap appeared in the Union line
at a crucial moment on the first day of the battle and Confederate
troops began to pour through it, Thomas led a rally that saved the
Federals from a serious defeat. He held the Union line together while
the rest of the army, commanded by William Rosecrans [06 Sep 1819
– 11 Mar 1898], slipped back into Chattanooga. In 1864, Thomas
commanded the Army of the Cumberland during the Atlanta campaign led
by general William T. Sherman [08 Feb 1820 – 14 Feb 1891].
After the capture of Atlanta, Thomas's
army was sent to pursue the remnants of Confederate General John Bell
Hood's army back into Tennessee while Sherman marched across Georgia.
Thomas scored two huge victories at Franklin and Nashville as Hood
desperately flung his army at the Yankees, resulting in the near disintegration
of the once great Rebel force. After the war, Thomas remained in the
army. He was transferred to the Military Division of the Pacific,
and he died of a stroke on 28 March 1870.

^1811 Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge, US welfare
worker and fundraiser for the Union, who died on 26 August 1890.
Jane Blaikie was educated at the Young
Ladies' College in Philadelphia. In 1831 she married Abraham H. Hoge,
a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, merchant. Over the next several years,
in addition to caring for her large family, Jane Hoge was secretary
of the Pittsburgh Orphan Asylum. In 1848 the Hoges moved to Chicago,
where in 1858 Jane Hoge helped found and direct the Home for the Friendless.
The enlistment of two of her sons in the Union Army at the beginning
of the Civil War drew her into volunteer nursing work at Camp Douglas,
near Chicago. By late 1861 Hoge
and her friend Mary A. Livermore [19 Dec 1820 – 23 May 1905]
were working with the Chicago (later Northwestern) Sanitary Commission
under Eliza Chappell Porter. About that time they also were appointed
agents of Dorothea Dix, superintendent of army nurses, to recruit
nurses for service in hospitals in the Western Department (i.e., Illinois
and the states and territories westof the Mississippi River, as far
west as the Rocky Mountains and including New Mexico). In March 1862
they made a tour of army hospitals in Cairo and Mound City, Illinois,
in St. Louis, Missouri, in Paducah, Kentucky, and elsewhere. In December
1862, after attending a general conference of US Sanitary Commission
leaders in Washington DC, Hoge and Livermore were appointed associate
directors of the Chicago branch. The work demanded of them was great
and ceaseless. By letters, addresses, and other means they aroused
and maintained at high pitch the work of upwards of a thousand local
aid societies throughout the Northwest in collecting and forwarding
clothing, medical and hospital supplies, food, and other materials.
During 1863 Jane Hoge made three trips to the front in the Vicksburg,
Mississippi, campaign, combining her inspection of the logistics system
with the nursing of soldiers. Hoge's
account of her wartime experiences was published as The Boys in
Blue (1867). In 1871 she organized a fund-raising campaign that
financed the founding of the Evanston (Illinois) College for Ladies,
which opened in September of that year under Frances Willard. From
1872 to 1885 she headed the Woman's Presbyterian Board of Foreign
Missions in the Northwest.

1809 Jan Rutten, Dutch artist who died on 10 October 1884.
1804 George Baxter, English engraver and printer
who died on 11 January 1867. — links
to images.1803 John Ericsson, inventor of the screw
propeller 1774 Charles Turner, English engraver
and draftsman, who died on 01 August 1857.  Not to be confused with
THE Joseph Mallord William Turner [23 Apr 1775 – 19
Dec 1851]  MORE
ON TURNER AT ART 4 AUGUST
with links to images.1712 Johann
Samuel König, Swiss mathematician who died on 21 August
1757. 1704 Gabriel
Cramer, Swiss mathematician who died on 04 January 1752. He
worked on analysis and determinants. His major mathematical work is Introduction
à l'analyse des lignes courbes algébraiques (1750). 1526
Augustus, Elector of Saxony & leader of Protestant Germany. He
died on 12 February 1586.

Thought for the day:
He who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn`t been asleep.
Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
 José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher [09 May 1883
– 18 Oct 1955]. I am constantly so busy deciding what I am going to do
that I never have time to do it.
Too many people decide what we are going to do, and too few help us do it.